Life Is Hard. Press Play.

Patung Beruang jarang bercerita tentang music dengan orang lain. Entah kenapa, music is something quite personal to myself. 

Some people that close to me know I am a huge fan of Afgan, hehehehe.. 

Ya, sampai sanggup terbang ke Jakarta just to make sure that we fulfill our promise to meet each other once a year. 

But nobody really knows why Afgan has such a sentimental value to me. 

And.. it is ok. 

Patung Beruang tidak berhasrat untuk bercerita tentang sebabnya di sini. Some stories are meant to stay quietly in our hearts, cewahhhh...

Ada juga yang tahu Patung Beruang suka orchestra. 

Betul... 

Every orchestra that I've attended gave a completely different experience. The music may be the same. The orchestra may be familiar. But somehow, every performance feels different. The atmosphere is different. The interpretation is different. The conductor is different. The audience is different. 

And that feeling when hundreds of people sit quietly in a concert hall, waiting for the first note to be played..... priceless.

Kalau dilihat dari segi matematik, harga tiket orchestra mungkin nampak mahal untuk a two-hour performance. 

But if you ask me? 

The satisfaction is irreplaceable. 

Because, we don't pay for the 2 hours. We pay for the feeling that stays with us long after the 2 hours are over. 

Maybe that is why music means something to me. 

It is not merely sound. 

It carries memories. It carries people. It carries places. And sometimes, it carries us through days when we don't quite know how to carry ourselves. 

A few weeks ago, someone was away from his office for a while. 

Honestly, Patung Beruang rasa bersalah sebab sebelum itu, diri ini jarang checking on him. Sampai Patung Beruang sendiri tak tahu yang he was actually not feeling well.

Thank you for letting me know that you were under the weather. 

And thank you for opening up to me about the struggles that you have been going through. 

One the 1st day he came back to the office, that morning, Patung Beruang shared one of my favourite songs with him. 

Nothing dramatic. 

Just a song. 

With a small hope that perhaps, it might lift his motivation a little to go through a tough day. Or perhaps a tough week. 

That was actually the 1st time I gave a song to someone, hehehe... Funny, right? 

For someone who loves music, Patung Beruang rupanya jarang berkongsi lagu dengan orang. 

As I mentioned before, I wish I could help you, but truthfully, I don't know how.

Perhaps, by simply keep checking on you and keep you in my prayers, it may somehow ease your burden. 

And at the very least, let you know that you're not battling these storms alone. 

We may not have the right words. We may not have the solution. We may not even know how to make things better. 

But....

We can still be there. We can still listen. We can still check in. And we can still pray. Maybe, that is enough for now. 

And to that someone, if you ever happen to read this: 

Thank you for still fighting.

I know it hasn't been easy. 

I may not know how difficult it has been for you, but thank you for doing your best and for continuing to show up, even on the days when it feels incredibly hard. 

Thank you for still fighting...

Maybe, for now, that's all I want you to know....

Then, last week, another story happened. 

My junior contacted me. 

He voiced out his frustration, sadness, anger and burnout. I've offered to meet him personally. Eventually, we decided to meet the following day, after work. 

So on that day, habis saja kerja, Patung Beruang terus rush ke my favourite Nasi Arab restaurant in Cyberjaya. 

He actually has no issue in terms of work. His current problems are mostly about the people surrounding him.

Well.. 

Dimana-mana pun akan ada makhluk yang pelik. 

Percayalah. Even if he works in the best company in the world, he will still meet some makhluk pelik there. Corporate life is like that. 

We cannot choose everyone we have to work with. We cannot control everyone's behaviour.  We cannot expect everyone to have the same values, work ethics, emotional maturity, or moral compass as us. 

What we can control is ourselves. 

Manage our expectations. Learn not to be overly influenced by people around us. Don't allow someone else's toxicity to corrupt our own values. And most importantly, make sure our morale compass remains pointed in the right direction. 

Surviving corporate life is not about becoming tougher. 

It is making sure that while surviving, we don't become the very thing we once disliked. 

The saddest part was when he said, 

"Kak Ily, I need to survive in that office because I just bought a house. My wife and kid are so happy with this new house. I'm the sole bread winner. I have to be strong and face everything, for the sake of my family."

That sentence stayed with me. 

Because sometimes, behind a person's "I'm ok", there is a whole family depending on him to keep going. 

Long story short, he asked Patung Beruang for some words. 

He wanted to know how Patung Beruang copes with all the craziness in a day-to-day life.  

The answer was actually very simple. I told him: 

"Umur 30 ke 40 tahun adalah waktu paling mencabar. Waktu ini, Tuhan akan uji kita berkali-kali sampai kita jatuh terduduk. 

Be it in career, personal life, health, financial, relationship and everything in between.  

Why? Because Tuhan is preparing a better version of yourself. 

Trust me. When you reach your 40s, you'll feel different. More mature, more wiser, more patient, and hopefully, a better hamba Allah. 

So hang in there. You're not alone. 

Al-Quran dah cakap, setiap kesusahan akan diikuti kemudahan. Tuhan ulang 2 kali berturut-turut ayat ini. This is His promise. So, hang in there." 

For me, telling him to do more solat, read more Al-Quran, wake up for more Tahajjud, give more sedekah, and do more good deeds would have been too cliche. 

Not because I ignores religion. Quite the opposite. He already does all of that. 

Sometimes, when someone is already trying their best spiritually, what they need is not another reminder that they should do more. 

Maybe they just need someone to sit beside them and say,

"I know. This is hard." 

At the end of our meeting, he thanked me for sparing the time, and more importantly, for listening to him without judgement. 

Then he said something that made me smile:

"Kak Ily dah jaga saya sejak umur saya 20-an." 

Patung Beruang hanya tersenyum. 

The truth is....

I feel responsible to look after him. 

Because I was the one who pursued him to leave Big 4 and enter the corporate world. 

Not because he was not suitable for Big 4. He was. 

But purely because I could see his potential in the corporate. 

And today, looking at where he is, I can only say: Alhamdulillah... 

My instinct was correct. 

Maybe that is also part of growing older, hehehe...  Older lah sangat kan? Ilyana, you just 43 years old... 

We don't just take care of ourselves anymore. 

We also carry a little responsibility for the people we once believed in. We simply need to remind them that they are still the person we believed in. 

So, after all the serious conversations that evening, Patung Beruang decided to release some tension. With music.

Patung Beruang shared with him my newly created Spotify playlist.

Monday Survival Mode, namanya.. hehehe.. 

The name itself says everything. It is not exactly a motivational playlist. In fact not all the songs are about motivation. 

Some songs are loud. Some are dramatic. Some are romantic. Some are melancholic. Some make you want to drive faster. Some make you want to stare outside the window dramatically like you're in a music video. Some make you want to sing. Some make you want to scream. And some songs... you simply don't know why they are there. But somehow, they belong there.

What a complicated Ilyana, right? 

(Soalan yang sama Patung Beruang tanya pada Engineer Bear malam tadi ketika kami bercakap tentang what are we in next 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. Kehidupan yang complicated untuk 2 Beruang yang complicated, yang terpisah oleh jarak dan luka, huhuhu...) 

Basically, Monday Survival Mode is a life soundtrack. 

A soundtrack for Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. 

A soundtrack for traffic jams. For difficult meetings. For deadlines. For dealing with makhluk pelik. For days when your inbox seems to reproduce by itself. For days when you are tired but still have to show up. For days when you are angry. For days when you miss someone. For days when you feel like giving up. And for days when you simply need something to remind you:

"Come on. One more day. You can do this."

That is what Patung Beruang hopes to feel when listening to Monday Survival Mode.

Not necessarily motivated. Sometimes, just less alone. 

Maybe 1 song will make you smile. Another might make you remember someone. Another might make you roll your eyes and say,

"What the hell is this song doing in my playlist?"

Another might suddenly make you sing at the tops of your lungs in the car. And perhaps, somewhere between the 3rd and 10th song, you realise that your mood has changed. 

The problem is still there. The traffic is still terrible. The boss is still the boss. The meeting is still tomorrow. The workload is still waiting. 

Life is still life.

But somehow... 

You feel a little more ready to face it.

Maybe that is what music does. 

It doesn't solve our problems. It doesn't change the situation. It doesn't make the difficult people disappear. It doesn't pay our bills. It doesn't magically fix a broken heart. 

But music can sit beside us while we go through all of that. It can keep us company. It can give us a little courage. It can make us remember that we are still alive, still feeling, still capable of laughing, still capable of hoping.

And, that is enough...

Just a little survival kits for ordinary people trying to get through extraordinary days. 

So...

Life is hard. Press play. 

Sing your heart out until your lungs scream.

And if Monday is still terrible after that...

Well, 

There is always Tuesday, hehehe...